Ocean Collaborators

Schooling fish know that working together is better for everyone. The same is true on the Ocean Portal, where we are gathering a group of outstanding organizations in the fields of marine science, education, media, conservation, and other areas. By pooling our expertise and top assets, we can provide a richer experience than any one of us could alone. Get to know each organization by exploring their contributions on the OP and visiting their websites.

Featured Collaborators

ARKive is a unique global initiative, gathering together the best films, photographs and audio recordings of the world's threatened animals, plants and fungi into one centralized digital library. Films and photographs are a powerful means of building environmental awareness - they can bring a scientific name to life, show what a species looks like and why it is special. Continued habitat destruction and the rise in extinction rates also mean that for many species, films and photographs may soon be all that remains. They are, therefore, important historical and scientific records of the species they depict. ARKive is leading the 'virtual' conservation effort by creating comprehensive and enduring multimedia species profiles, complementing other species information datasets, and making a key resource available for scientists, conservationists, educators and the general public. These important audio-visual records are being preserved and maintained for the benefit of future generations and are freely available at www.arkive.org.

The ocean is essential to all life on Earth and Ocean Conservancy is the world's oldest and largest conservation organization dedicated solely to protecting this life support system. We're starting a sea change for generations to come.

Oceana seeks to make our oceans as rich, healthy and abundant as they once were. We believe in the importance of science in identifying problems and solutions. Our scientists work closely with our teams of economists, lawyers and advocates to achieve tangible results for the oceans.
Our campaigns are working to do the following:
• Protect marine habitats and creatures, such as sea turtles and sharks, that are most at risk from irresponsible fishing methods.
• Combat the effects of pollution and climate change on the oceans and advocate for clean energy and an end to offshore drilling.
• Protect some of the world’s most beautiful and threatened marine places, from the Arctic to Patagonia.
The good news is that we can restore our oceans to their former glory. In many cases, laws governing fishing and pollution already exist – we simply need enforcement.

SeaWeb is an international, nonprofit, communications organization dedicated to creating a culture of ocean conservation. We work collaboratively to inform and empower diverse ocean voices and conservation champions in strategic, targeted sectors to encourage market solutions, policies and behaviors that result in a healthy thriving ocean. We transform knowledge into action by shining a spotlight on workable, science-based solutions to the most serious threats facing the ocean such as climate change, pollution and overexploitation.

Welcome to the Ocean Portal – a unique, interactive online experience that inspires awareness, understanding, and stewardship of the world’s Ocean, developed by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and more than 20 collaborating organizations.

You are among the first wave of visitors to the Portal, an experience which we hope will empower you to shape and share your personal Ocean experiences, knowledge, and perspectives.

The input you provide through feedback modules and comment boxes will help us to shape future Ocean Portal content and functionality. Like the Ocean, which is made of millions of marine species, your comments, questions, and clicks will help to bring the Portal closer to the vastness and variety of the Ocean itself.

Smithsonian Contributors

Anne Wiley is a Peter Buck postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of Natural History in the Division of Birds. She uses molecular tools such as stable isotopes to study modern and ancient vertebrate populations, and is particularly interested in seabirds and the influence of humans on their biology.

Stuart Sandin is a marine ecologist with the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Sandin is trained in both field research and mathematics and has applied both of these skills to consider the role of human activities in altering the structure and functioning of coral reef ecosystems. His research goals are to apply marine ecological insights to improve the management of the world’s imperiled coral reefs. Sandin has been chief scientist on a number of expeditions to the coral reefs of the central Pacific, including the recent cruise to the Southern Line Islands.

Katrina Lohan is a MarineGEO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and is co-advised by Dr. Gregory Ruiz at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and Dr. Robert Fleischer at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute at the National Zoological Park. Her current research involves using genetic tools to examine diversity, host specificity, and distribution of oyster parasites in various locations throughout the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean waters.

Katrina's work has brought her to Southampton College of Long Island University where she majored in Marine Science. While there, Katrina became particularly fascinated with the use of genetic tools to be able to study marine organisms and wanted to learn more about these techniques. To do this, she obtained a Master’s degree in Biology from American University. Her Master’s thesis involved the use of genetic tools to examine parasite lineages infecting a small migratory songbird, the common yellowthroat. It was through this work that she became fascinated by parasites and disease ecology. She went on to obtain a PhD in Marine Science from the College of William and Mary. Her PhD research was conducted at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and involved examining the distribution, host specificity, and population genetics of a parasitic dinoflagellate that infects crustaceans, notably the American blue crab.

Charlotte Runzel is a summer intern working on the ‪#‎OceanOptimism initiative, led by Nancy Knowlton, the Sant Chair for Marine Science. Charlotte is an incoming senior at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a marine science major and conservation and resources minor, interested in pursuing a career in ocean conservation. Starting off at Berkeley in pre-medicine studying molecular and cell biology major, she switched her major to marine sciences after studying invertebrate zoology in a biology course at Berkeley. Realizing what her true passions were, she switched interests and has been involved in marine sciences ever since.

Her interest in marine sciences most likely stemmed from her father’s love of SCUBA diving. When she learned to swim, her father simultaneously taught her how to snorkel. She received her PADI open water diving license at the age of ten. She’s been lucky enough to dive all over the world – from the Blue Hole in Belize to dry suit diving in Iceland. After she graduates, Charlotte hopes to expand her SCUBA diving certifications while working on marine research.

As a kid, Chris Meyer filled his closet with shoeboxes of baseball cards, sand from various beaches, anything that indulged his “hyper-active collector gene.” Now, as a Smithsonian scientist and the Director of the Moorea Biocode Project, Chris has turned his hobby into a full-time job collecting and studying marine life in spectacular places like Moorea. Chris’ work is helping to document marine biodiversity, figure out how ecosystems function, and predict how they will respond to change. These are big issues to tackle, because in most of the ocean, the more you look, the more life forms you find. “I see it as a kind of huge scavenger hunt,” Chris says. “It’s very rewarding to pursue questions you are curious about.”